by Marc Zicree
“Oh, shit,” Goldie said.
I didn’t want to look. I had to look.
“I can’t see,” I said. Stars danced in front of my eyes; I fought blackness.
“Don’t look. You’ve got a splinter in your side.”
I almost laughed. A splinter. How mundane. I pulled my head up so I could see. I was a mess. The good news was that I hadn’t impaled myself on the main branch, but on a shard about two fingers thick. I could see the bloodied tip angling out over my ribs. The bad news was that the other end was still attached to the branch.
“Give me the knife,” Goldie said.
“Goldman, if I give you the knife, how are you going to hold onto me?”
“Good point.” He shifted his grasp on my legs.
I shuddered as the splinter twisted in my side.
“Damn! Sorry. Okay, now give me the knife.” I felt him take careful hold of the blade. “Let go.”
I did, and gladly.
“This will no doubt hurt like hell,” he informed me. “Are you ready?”
“Jeez, Goldman—what a question. No, I’m not ready. Cut the damn thing.”
A kitchen knife is crappy for sawing wood. It took him several agonizing minutes to saw through the thing. I bit my lip, ground my teeth, growled, and panted like a dog. The splinter broke free of the tree in one final twist of agony.
Oh, God, I thought, as the swirling specks of light gathered behind my eyes, I’m going to pass out. But I didn’t pass out—not just then. I passed out when Goldman, having lowered me as far as he could without falling, let go of my feet. I came down on my back in a shower of needles and bark and an explosion of pain.
When I woke, there was icy water dribbling into my face. “Drink,” he said.
I obeyed, taking the squeeze bottle out of his hands. As I guzzled water, he said, “I thought about trying to extract that thing while you were out, but I couldn’t tell how bad it was.”
“You’re not a doctor, so I’d just as soon you didn’t try to play one.”
“Yeah, well, I did manage to pull out some of the little bits and I cleaned around the wound and, um, put sort of a poultice on it. But Doc is going to have to perform the miracle today. I’m plumb out.”
“Getting late,” I observed.
He nodded, looking around at the striping of shadow and sunlight.
“Help me up.”
Getting vertical was hell. Walking was hell. Racing sunset was hell. I did not want to escape the clutches of some stupid pine tree only to become tweak chow.
At first I tried to be stoic and self-reliant, but by the time we reached the outskirts of Grave Creek, shadows were long, the sunlight was a tired red, and Goldman was practically carrying me.
When we reached the water tower, a cart came out to get us. I was so bloody glad to be off my feet, I nearly cried. Once we were settled in the cart, my side didn’t seem to hurt so bad. In fact, it felt sort of tingly. I rolled my head along the rail of the cart to get a look at the wound, wondering what kind of poultice he’d put on it.
Goldman had his hand over it, as if to keep me from seeing how bad it was. The expression on his face was tight and dark. What did he think—that he could pull the damn thing out with his eyes? A snide and indignant order for him to get his hands off me popped into my head, then fizzled. Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t hurting me any. Just felt sort of tingly.
I rolled my head back the other way, gazing out over the rear of the cart toward the blanket of trees. Among the slanting shadows floated several pairs of ruddy embers.
I’d’ve refused a general anesthetic if they’d offered me one. But Doc gave me a local instead, then got to work cleaning and stitching. It was not a painless procedure. I meditated on packing my saddlebags, saddling and bridling my horse, and taking a trail into the Adirondacks. And I wondered what Goldman was telling Cal.
I could just imagine.
When we’d come in, naturally, the first question he asked was, “What happened?” I said, “Long story,” and Goldman said, “Cal, we need to talk.” When Cal seemed to want to follow my gurney into the E.R., Goldman added, “Now.”
“Whatever he tells you,” I warned Cal as the nurses wheeled me away, “don’t listen!”
When the E.R. doors swung shut and cut me off, Goldman was already drawing Cal away toward Dr. Nelson’s office.
A stupid thing to say, I reflected, as I watched Doc bandage my ribs. I really should know by now that any word spoken against his precious Goldie is a word Cal Griffin doesn’t hear.
Doc put me in a wheelchair and started to roll me back to my room.
“I can handle it,” I told him.
“No,” he said, “you cannot. If you try to drive this chair on your own, you will pull out all of my careful work and you will begin to bleed. The wound was both deep and ragged, Colleen; you will not be able to bounce up and run away from this one. Besides, I imagine Dr. Nelson would disapprove of you bleeding on his so-clean floors.”
“I gotta talk to Cal.”
“Then I will take you to him.”
I gritted my teeth all the way to Nelson’s office. When I saw the look on Cal’s face, my heart lurched. He looked like a crusade about to roll off to the Holy Land.
“What’s he been telling you?” I asked, and cringed at how wimpy my voice sounded. “Did he tell you he saw a flare?”
“Of course he told me.” His eyes were bright and the words bubbled out, mixed with laughter. “Why wouldn’t he tell me?”
Behind me Doc repeated, “He saw a flare?”
“No,” I said. “He did not. If Goldie saw a flare it’s because he fantasized one.”
The hope in Cal’s eyes faltered. “What do you mean—he fantasized one?”
“I mean there wasn’t a flare. He only thought—”
Goldman cut me off. “That doesn’t make any sense. I told you before: if I’d been fantasizing, I would have fantasized Tina, not someone I’d never met. This flare was a woman— an adult. She was only generically like Tina.”
In spite of Doc’s magic herbs, I was bone weary and I hurt all over. I didn’t have the energy to argue. But I had to. I couldn’t let Cal break his heart on false hope. Again.
I grasped my wheel rims and pushed myself farther into the room, drawing a cry of protest from both Doc and my stitched ribs. “There was no flare, dammit, Goldie! There was a guy with a guitar and a bunch of sleepwalking zombies. He was a magician or a—a hypnotist, and he made you all see what you wanted to see and hear what you wanted to hear.”
“Why?” Cal asked.
“So they’d follow him. You should’ve seen him, Cal.” I nodded at Goldie. “He was… smitten. He was singing the guy’s songs; he was following him like a little lost lamb; he was staring up at him like—”
“Like he had a flare hovering over his head,” said Goldman dryly. Before I could crank out a comeback, he added, “How do you think you ended up in that tree?”
Brain tilt. “He did it—the blues guy.”
“He didn’t even see you coming.”
Yeah, that’s how it had seemed to me, too, at the time. But now it was hard to admit it. “He had a force field of some sort.”
“Oh, you saw it, did you?”
“No, I didn’t see it.”
“Well, I did.” Goldman thumped his chest. “I saw it. And I saw where it was coming from.”
Cal’s eyes were on his face, bright with hope. “The flare?”
Goldman nodded. “She was cloaking him in some way. Not to keep people away from him, I think—there was a little kid holding the hem of his jacket. But when Colleen came flying at him, the flare shot out this… blast of energy. Like a shock wave. Or a—a photon torpedo. That’s what put Colleen in the tree.”
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair for me to be fuzzy and weak when I needed to be sharp and clear and strong. I bit the inside of my lip to keep from snapping and snarling.
Cal knelt by my wheelchair and met
me eye-to-eye. “You didn’t see any of this?”
I gave him the most straight-up, confident look I could muster and begged him silently to see in it how sure I was. “No, Cal. I didn’t see anything but the guitar player.”
“Did you feel any desire to follow him?”
“No. Not a bit. I just went along because I wanted Goldman not to follow him.”
“Was it as Colleen said, Goldie?” Doc asked. “Did this man’s music mesmerize you? Did these other people seem mesmerized?”
“I’d say they were.”
I snorted. “Oh, yeah, but you weren’t, right?”
“No, Colleen, I wasn’t.”
He sounded so calm and self-assured and—well, sane— while I knew he was nothing of the sort. Looking at Cal’s face, it was clear the sanity card was one I didn’t dare play right now.
“If I had been mesmerized,” Goldie continued reasonably, “you’d still be hanging upside down in that tree.”
Slam-dunk.
He turned to Cal, his eyes earnest, as if he was a wide-open book begging to be read. “There was a flare, Cal. Colleen couldn’t see her—I could. It’s that simple. Colleen didn’t hear the music at first, either.”
“I heard it,” I protested.
“Sure, after you got within hearing range.” He tapped his ear. “I heard it before that. That’s why I went off on my own—to look for the source of it. And I heard it last night when we brought in the Gossetts and Beechers. The kids and the dog heard it, too. So did Jim. He caught me humming it and thought it was a song he knew. It was one of the Bluesman’s tunes.”
Cal gave him a long, searching look. “Are you saying this is what called off the Shadows?”
“I’m saying… it could be.”
Cal turned back to me. “But you don’t believe him.”
Oh, God, but I wanted to sleep. “Oh, hell. Yeah, okay. I guess I believe him. Goldman was singing something about ‘huddled masses’ and driving me nuts. He wandered off, I followed, and—yeah—our Pied Piper friend turned out to have the song in his repertoire.”
“If he heard what you couldn’t hear, mightn’t he have seen what you couldn’t see?”
Put that way, it sounded reasonable, even to me. I should’ve known better than to argue with a damned lawyer.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, anything’s possible, I guess.” I was wilting. Melting away like the Wicked Witch of the West.
Doc’s hand lit warmly on my shoulder. “Colleen needs rest. Perhaps we can explore the meaning of all this in the morning.”
I could tell that neither Goldie nor Cal wanted to wait that long to explore anything.
“In just a moment,” Cal said. “Let’s assume that there is a musician drawing people into following him. And that there is a flare shielding him in some way—protecting him. Why? Why is he collecting people? Where’s he taking them?”
“And for what purpose?” murmured Doc.
“Well, that’s a no-brainer,” I mumbled.
“And, um, how does he protect the flare?” Goldman was tugging at his lip, talking almost to himself. “How does he keep her from being sucked up by the Megillah? Or maybe the question is, how does he keep the Megillah from finding her?”
Cal looked up at him, his eyes intensely bright. “Where’s she from? Maybe she’s not the only one.”
“The Source has Tina, Cal,” I said, sounding surly. “There might be one flare or twenty or even a hundred where this guy is from, but not one of them is Tina.”
“We don’t know that, Colleen. We don’t know where he’s from. For all we know, he may have somehow gotten her away from the Source. She could be a direct link.” Cal rose, looking over my head at Doc, ignoring me. “I want to know where she’s from. And how he’s protecting her.”
“Or enslaving her?” asked Doc.
Cal’s face was grim. “Or enslaving her. Enslaving them.”
I lost track of the murmur of voices. When I came up out of my head-trip, blue and cream tiles were slipping by under the wheels of my chair. I turned my head so I could see who was driving. I recognized Doc’s slender surgeon’s hands and felt a flicker of disappointment.
“Guess I zoned out,” I said. My words came out like mush. “No big deal, though, huh? I didn’t have a whole lot t’offer the discussion anyway.”
“You offered a great deal, Colleen. You do yourself a disservice.”
I shook my head. “What is it about me, Doc? Why am I so damn dense? Why is this shit we’re going through changing everybody but me? I’m like a—a rock. I just sit like a lump while the whole fucking world changes around me. Evolves. Why aren’t I evolving?” Oh, dammit. I was going to cry. What the hell had he given me?
His hand came down on my shoulder, firm and consoling. “Colleen, you are beaten up and exhausted. So, I will ignore what you are now saying and advise you to do the same. Yes, you are, indeed, like a rock in many ways. You are stable, solid, dependable. Whatever happens, you can be relied upon to be where you are most needed. You are… an anchorage that the rest of us need.”
I sniffled. God, I actually sniffled. “Cal doesn’t need me. He just needs me to get out of his way. He makes a decision; I’m the one who’s gotta argue it. He comes up with a plan; I’m the one who’s gotta try to poke holes in it. You saw what happened just now. Shit, why couldn’t I just shut up?”
Doc chuckled. “Because you care. You care that we don’t get distracted—drawn off target, yes? As I said: you keep us focused. Calvin knows this as well as I do.” Something soothing seemed to ooze out of Doc’s voice— out of his fingertips—and fill my veins and arteries with warmth.
“You see, that’s just what I mean,” I complained. “You got this thing you do that just makes everything all right. The sky is falling and the world is crumbling and I hurt like hell and you say something and it’s all okay.”
Now he laughed. It was a free, natural laugh I’d hardly ever heard him use. “And you, Colleen, you have this thing you do, as well.”
“What thing?” I wanted to know. “What thing do I do?”
He didn’t answer me right away. Instead, he wheeled me to the door of my room, propped it open, pushed me inside and rolled the chair over to the bed.
I started to lever myself up out of the chair.
“Nyet!” he said sharply. Then he lifted me onto the bed, pulled a blanket over me, and perched on the edge of the mattress to look at me. His face, always neatly shaven, was all serious, solemn angles, hollowed out beneath the high cheekbones. He looked as weary as I felt, but there was an almost-twinkle in his eyes.
“The thing you do, Colleen, is to make things happen, not as our fears tell us they must, but as our hopes tell us they should. You defy all odds, you ignore all dangers, you acknowledge no defeat. If you did not do this thing you do so very well, neither I, nor Goldie, nor perhaps a single member of the Gossett or Beecher families would be alive tonight.” He put his hand over mine where it lay on the blanket and squeezed it. “Be a rock, Colleen. Because it is a rock we need.”
Tears leapt from my eyes, giving me no chance to call them back. Stupid. Weak.
He watched me for a moment, smiling this warm little smile he usually reserved for injured children. Then he leaned forward and kissed my forehead. “Spatyeh, boi baba.”
“What?” I murmured, already half asleep. “What?” “I said, sleep, tough lady.”
I seemed to have no choice but to close my eyes and let sleep carry away the tears.
FIVE
GOLDIE
Am I sure, Cal asks me, that I can find the Bluesman again?
I just nod and don’t mention that since I first heard it, I haven’t been able to get his music out of my head. Admitting that might induce Doc to medicate me after all, and I suddenly find the prospect unsettling. I’ve connected with the music—or it’s connected with me—and I don’t want to risk jamming the connection. So I look Cal in the eye and give an emphatic, “Yes!”
We
ship out as soon as Colleen is ready to travel, which, for the record, is two days later than she says she’s ready. Doc has no patience with her macho sensibilities. Even at that, she heals up a lot faster than he expects.
We keep the horses, but leave the wagon with Dr. Nelson. Where we’re going, a vehicle that size will be a liability. Besides, it’ll make a dandy ambulance. Dr. Nelson and his staff display their gratitude in the form of food, clothing, and enough medical supplies to stock a small MASH unit.
Now we wander the wooded hills of West VA on horseback, trying to dial in the local blues station. We are not on the road long when I realize that my receiver has a bunged-up antenna. The music in my head is not much more than an echo—no, scratch that, a persistent memory. A memory that is almost as flaky as I am.
It’s high noon and we’ve been zigzagging through the
trees since daybreak when my radar finally kicks in. Oddly
enough, Colleen notices I’ve connected before I do. “Hey, Goldman,” she says. “You’re doing it again.” “I’m … what?”
“Singing,” she says. “You were singing.”
They all look at me.
I test the connection. “North,” I say, and we go north.
Two miles later I’ve lost it again. It’s like that all day— on again, off again—as we move north, then west, then north. I pretend confidence I don’t feel and they follow.
On one late afternoon rest stop we consult a map of the world as we once knew it—another gift from the folks in Grave Creek.
Cal says, “If we continue this pattern, we’re eventually going to meet the Ohio River.” He grimaces. “That is, if the landscape hasn’t shifted.”
Once upon a time, you could look at a map created the previous year and assume the landmarks would have stayed right about where the cartographer put them. Not so, in this kinky new America. The Ohio River may or may not be anywhere near the wiggly blue line on our map. It might no longer be blue. It might no longer contain water.
Cal gives the cartoon landscape another long look, then gazes off into the distance, his fingertips tracing the map’s blue line—up and down, up and down, like a blind man reading braille. The rest of us hunker in a circle, watching him. The wind sighs and hisses through the brush, and the leaves tinkle and moan—a sonata for theremin and wind chimes. I think I hear a dim fizz of static.